Our local phone comapny has managed to fuck up our lines (after two months off an on of fighting with them, a repair dude finally knocked on our door this morning, and admitted that they had a problem). There are two problems, actually:

1. The physical problem, which involves our phone line being crossed with our next door neighbor's. We found this out on our own, after some intense investigation that we shouldn't have had to do, because the local phone company should ahve admitted and fixed the problem two months ago. We also found out that our neighbor's lines are corssed with their neighbor's lines on the other side. Only because our neighbors are also customers of the same local phone company, and finally figured out what was going on (after trying their own route of investigation, and talking to us), and called it in, is the local phone company admitting that it is their problem. Of course, the solution to this involves digging up part of our lawn.

2. Said local phone company has consistently claimed that we are not their customers, despite sending us bills, and us paying them for what has been increasingly disruptive phone "service". I'm freaking glad we went to cable modem a couple of years ago, instead of dial-up. Said local phone company claims that we are either customers of a rival big-name company, or a no-name company, depending on whom we talk to at local phone company. We tried calling rival big-name company to find out what their story is.
Their story is that they don't provide local phone service in our area. We then tried calling no-name company, and finding out what their story is. Said no-name company says we were customers back in 2004, but we have not been (nor have we been billed for service) since then. I know that's wrong, because we were customers of no-name company until we switched to the local phone company because of a good deal on long distance in January of this year.

Basically, the various that provide phone "service" around here are all trying to pass the buck to avoid fixing the problem.

Solution: fuck the land lines, report the local and no-name companies to the public service commisssion, and go with cell service.

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